Animal rights:

Tom Regan = complete prohibitionist

Singer = partly prohibitionist because he is a utilitarian

 Social contract 
o Tom Regan says that it is (the social contract) woolly inadequate
o Social contract said we really care about animals but really cared about who
owns the animals
o View of animals as property (previously existed maybe still currently)
 Regan says this leads to saying  animals are resources
 We’ll do with them what we will
o Doesn’t make sense that animals be a part of the social contract; animals cannot
be moral agents  in the social contract, it is the case that agents and subject
are equivalent
 You can’t be a subject without being an agent
 There’s an innate right not to be a subject to cruelty
 Way around this theory  things can have rights even if they’re not part
of the social contract because these things can be be morally considered.
 Prohibitions animal rights activist have:
o No testing
 Testers will say  All testing must minimize cruelty/pain/suffering
 Cant provide a good argument for not testing on animals  ex. how
would we advance medically if we didn’t?
o Eating Animals
 Healthy debate for contractarians based on cultures  such food being a
large part of a culture
o Hunting
 At times this prohibition is problematic  in some cultures it provides
some sort of support for protein in certain communities

Utilitarianism on animal rights:

 Provide far more protection for animals than the social contract
o Because animals are capable of suffering
 Eating/testing/hunting animals strongly applies that animals are in no
doubt moral subjects
o The protection of animals is conditional and incomplete
 Conditional  who as a utilitarian would you think its not wrong to harm
animals
 All that matters with utilitarianism is how much happiness and
suffering is produced  the suffering and happiness is all that
matters, not the animal
  Regan’s claim  you’re not important, it is what is inside you that
is important (full of happiness or suffering) – we are a vessel for
what actually has value

 Marginal Cases:
 Seems to be the case for example  if I need to do an experiment
to find out something, and I have a choice in experimenting on a
newborn or a 4 year old chimpanzee, who will a utilitarian say to
preform it on?
- If you’re a utilitarian you will say to experiment on the
newborn because it is less emotional  the chimpanzee is
far more emotional and more developed
- Regans claim on this: It will be morally more acceptable to
experiment on severely disabled children
 Singers response to Regan: is something like “look
there’s a problem in the way Regan is
characterizing us as vessels – a bottle that holds
water can hold any sort of thing and there is no
intrinsic value on the vessel, the vessel is purely
instrumentally valuable”  instrumental meaning
there’s a means to an end
 No we aren’t vessels like cups because we are the
sort of vessel that has the capacity of happiness
and suffering  living things may be able to have
intrinsic value because were the only things that
cane experience suffering
 *No living things = no happiness and no
suffering*  hint why utilitarians seems to
be the most radical
 Inherent Value Theory for animal cruelty  Regan
o Claim  life has intrinsic value  anything that lives intestinally sees itself to
end (purpose for life)
 We don’t live to serve each other – we live our life to live our own; we
live our life to lead and no one has the right to take this life from us
 Anything hat has the right to live  we don’t have the right to take their
life from them
 There is no special reason for taking the life of an animal

o Point  the thing about inherent value is that once you have inherent value it
comes with a complete and total set of rights
 If life has inherent value then all life equally has it, there is no scale of
inherent value
 All animals count
 o Goal of utilitarian’s is to end all suffering and any suffering that can be avoided –
cruelty and suffering to animals can be avoided

 Where Regan runs into trouble  speciesism

o Heart of the problem is we tend to thing there is something special about us –
we are discriminating against other animals
 Speciesist behavior
 Is we think there is any meaningful difference in discriminating someone
that is black or discriminating an animal you are a speciesist.
 Ex. Owning slaves is the same as owning a chicken
o

Regan doesn’t want to attack the tricky questions

o he says he is not going to answer those questions because its not his problem
o he is advocating for something (animal rights) so he needs to attack these points;
it is not a theory.
 Such as plants (because it is a living thing and all living things have
inherent value) he says he doesn’t want to talk about it